VIEWS OF HOBBES, LOCKE AND ROUSSEAU ON THE NATURE OF SOCIETY

Prepared by Mujeebu Rahman V INTRODUCTION In the wake of the Scientific Revolution, and the new ways of thinking it prompted, scholars and philosophers began to reevaluate old notions about other aspects of society. They sought new insight into the underlying beliefs regarding government, religion, economics, and education. In the seventeenth century, the Scientific Revolution had provided a new model for how problems could be solved through rational thought and experimentation, rather than on the authority of religion or the ancients. Their efforts spurred the Enlightenment, a new intellectual movement that stressed reason and thought and the power of individuals to solve problems. Known also as the Age of Reason, the movement reached its height in the mid-1700s and brought great change to many aspects of Western civilization. Thomas Hobbes (15881679) In 1649, a civil war broke out over who would rule England Parliament or King Charles I. The war ended with the beheading of the king. Shortly after Charles was executed, an English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes (15881679), wrote The Leviathan (1651), a defense of the absolute power of kings. The horrors of the English Civil War convinced him that all humans were naturally selfish and wicked. The title of the book referred to a leviathan, a mythological, whale like sea monster that devoured whole ships. Hobbes likened the leviathan to government, a powerful state created to impose order. For Hobbes, the English Civil War, which began in 1642, and ended with the execution of King Charles I in 1649, was convincing evidence that men were ultimately selfish and competitive Hobbes began The Leviathan by describing the state of nature where all individuals were naturally equal. Every person was free to do what he or she needed to do to survive. As a result, everyone suffered from continued fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man [was] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. In the state of nature, there were no laws or anyone to enforce them. The only way out of this situation, Hobbes said, was for individuals to create some supreme power to impose peace on everyone. Because people acted in their own self-interest, Hobbes said, the ruler needed total power to keep citizens under control. The best government was one that had the awesome power of a leviathan (sea monster). In Hobbess view, such a government was an absolute monarchy, which could impose order and demand obedience. Hobbes borrowed a concept from English contract law: an implied agreement. Hobbes asserted that the people agreed among themselves to lay down their natural rights of equality and freedom and give absolute power to a sovereign. The sovereign, created by the people, might be a person or a group. The sovereign would make and enforce the laws to secure a peaceful society making life, liberty, and property possible. Hobbes called this agreement the social contract. Hobbes believed that a government headed by a king was the best form that the sovereign could take. Placing all power in the hands of a king would mean more resolute and consistent exercise of political authority, Hobbes argued. Hobbes also maintained that the social contract was an agreement only among the people and not between them and their king. Once the people had given absolute power to the king, they had no right to revolt against him. Hobbes warned against the church meddling with the kings government. He feared religion could become a source of civil war. Thus, he advised that the church become a
1

department of the kings government, which would closely control all religious affairs. In any conflict between divine and royal law, Hobbes wrote, the individual should obey the king or choose death. John Locke (16321704) John Locke (16321704) was born shortly before the English Civil War. Locke studied science and medicine at Oxford University and became a professor there. He sided with the Protestant Parliament against the Roman Catholic King James II in the Glorious Revolution of 168889. This event reduced the power of the king and made Parliament the major authority in English government. John Locke held a different, more positive, view of human nature. He believed that people could learn from experience and improve themselves. As reasonable beings, they had the natural ability to govern their own affairs and to look after the welfare of society. Locke criticized absolute monarchy and favored the idea of self-government. In 1690, Locke published his Two Treatises of Government. He generally agreed with Hobbes about the brutality of the state of nature, which required a social contract to assure peace. But he disagreed with Hobbes on two major points. First, Locke argued that natural rights such as life, liberty, and property existed in the state of nature and could never be taken away or even voluntarily given up by individuals. These rights were inalienable (impossible to surrender). Locke also disagreed with Hobbes about the social contract. For him, it was not just an agreement among the people, but between them and the sovereign (preferably a king). According to Locke, the natural rights of individuals limited the power of the king. The king did not hold absolute power, as Hobbes had said, but acted only to enforce and protect the natural rights of the people. If a sovereign violated these rights, the social contract was broken, and the people had the right to revolt and establish a new government. Although Locke spoke out for freedom of thought, speech, and religion, he believed property to be the most important natural right. He declared that owners may do whatever they want with their property as long as they do not invade the rights of others. Government, he said, was mainly necessary to promote the public good, that is to protect property and encourage commerce and little else. Govern lightly, Locke said. Locke favored a representative government such as the English Parliament, which had a hereditary House of Lords and an elected House of Commons. But he wanted representatives to be only men of property and business. Consequently, only adult male property owners should have the right to vote. Locke was reluctant to allow the propertyless masses of people to participate in government because he believed that they were unfit. The supreme authority of government, Locke said, should reside in the law-making legislature, like Englands Parliament. The executive (prime minister) and courts would be creations of the legislature and under its authority. Lockes theory had a deep influence on modern political thinking. His belief that a governments power comes from the consent of the people is the foundation of modern democracy. The ideas of government by popular consent and the right to rebel against unjust rulers helped inspire struggles for liberty in Europe and the Americas. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (17121778) Rousseau (1712 1778) was born in Geneva, Switzerland, where all adult male citizens could vote for a representative government. Rousseau traveled in France and Italy, educating himself. Rousseau was passionately committed to individual freedom. The son of a poor Swiss watchmaker, Rousseau won recognition as a writer of essays. A strange, brilliant, and controversial figure, Rousseau strongly disagreed with other Enlightenment thinkers on many matters. Most philosophes believed that reason, science, and art would improve life for all people. Rousseau, however, argued that civilization corrupted peoples natural goodness.

In 1751, he won an essay contest. He wrote that man was naturally good and was corrupted by society. He quickly became a celebrity in the French salons where artists, scientists, and writers gathered to discuss the latest ideas. A few years later he published another essay in which he described savages in a state of nature as free, equal, peaceful, and happy. When people began to claim ownership of property, Rousseau argued, inequality, murder, and war resulted. According to Rousseau, the powerful rich stole the land belonging to everyone and fooled the common people into accepting them as rulers. Rousseau concluded that the social contract was not a willing agreement, as Hobbes, Locke, and Montesquieu had believed, but a fraud against the people committed by the rich. In 1762, Rousseau published his most important work on political theory, The Social Contract. His opening line is still striking today: Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. Rousseau agreed with Locke that the individual should never be forced to give up his or her natural rights to a king. The problem in the state of nature, Rousseau said, was to find a way to protect everyones life, liberty, and property while each person remained free. Rousseaus solution was for people to enter into a social contract. They would give up all their rights, not to a king, but to the whole community, all the people. He called all the people the sovereign, a term used by Hobbes to mainly refer to a king. The people then exercised their general will to make laws for the public good. Rousseau argued that the general will of the people could not be decided by elected representatives. He believed in a direct democracy in which everyone voted to express the general will and to make the laws of the land. Rousseau had in mind a democracy on a small scale, a city-state like his native Geneva. In Rousseaus democracy, anyone who disobeyed the general will of the people will be forced to be free. He believed that citizens must obey the laws or be forced to do so as long as they remained a resident of the state. This is a civil state, Rousseau says, where security, justice, liberty, and property are protected and enjoyed by all. All political power, according to Rousseau, must reside with the people, exercising their general will. There can be no separation of powers, as Montesquieu proposed. The people, meeting together, will deliberate individually on laws and then by majority vote find the general will. Rousseaus general will was later embodied in the words We the people . . . at the beginning of the U.S. Constitution. Rousseau was rather vague on the mechanics of how his democracy would work. There would be a government of sorts, entrusted with administering the general will. But it would be composed of mere officials who got their orders from the people. Rousseau believed that religion divided and weakened the state. It is impossible to live in peace with people you think are damned, he said. He favored a civil religion that accepted God, but concentrated on the sacredness of the social contract. Rousseau realized that democracy as he envisioned it would be hard to maintain. He warned, As soon as any man says of the affairs of the State, What does it matter to me? the State may be given up for lost.

Prepared by: Mujeebu Rahman Vazhakkunnan Email: mujeebhcu@gmail.com